other countries laying ties and rails vs usa railroads

first hello,

so i saw the way some other countries lay ties and rails vs usa, well they have a better way than the usa. and i wish usa can adapted that technology the other countries have, so in russia (its easier to talk than put into words) the ties all their ties on mainline are converting if not already done to cement . side lines i would like to say yes but i do not know. now its how the russians replace the ties and rail. they have this car or few depends on other factors. lifts the tack pulls the spikes out pull the wooden ties out and puts in the cement ties, heres the catch they slide the cement ties under the rail, puts the ballast back and once they get so many feet oh oops km the machine will pick up put it on the side lay the new continuous rail with no joints down and replace the spikes. all by machines. no digging the ballast like usa does, no pounding the spikes by hand, and no replacing ties by hand all machines does that one continuous flow. and russians theory all machines does that, oh, i do not know abut the plates thats might be by hand. so in conclusion , russians idea the machines remove and replace the ties with cement, removes and replaces the old short rail to one continuous rail, even the machine puts in the spikes and pounds them in, its not only russia i saw france doing it also. apparently this russia idea works and france adopted that idea to suit their needs .

so i dont know about the ballast by the machine if the machine does it or not, because i said the machine does the ballast also but come to think of it i dont know if it does

so why doesnt usa adopted the technology from the russians that all machines does the job? have machine have a big roll of continuous track lays it down , pull the spikes out and pounds them in by machine, pulls old wooden ties out and replaces them with cement ties on all their mainlines just like russia. and also russsians main track is smooth as it can be after converting to cement ties, track and leveling out the track straight no kinks, no dips every 5 feet or so

i know i might be criticized (this is what i know and saw and gave my 2 cents worth in); about this, but we are behind in times when replacing ageing wooden ties and replaceing them with cement ties on our mainlines tracks all done by machine just like russia and france . i see the way usa replace rails, ballast, ties, all by hand maybe if lucky machine, machines to pull out wooden ties, relace them with all cement ties, pull out spikes and pound the spikes back in, i dont know about the ballast

switchmen37

Usually, American railroads are reluctant to remove wooden ties as they have been replaced and relayed many times, and they are a cheaper alternative for sidings and the like. Most European networks are government-owned and they can get funding very quickly so they can upgrade track, buy new engines and such much quicker than the USA. The USA has concrete ties on high-usage lines but wooden ties are still very frequent.

You need some of these machines that they use in Germany...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmcd4f65-Ho

euromodeller said:

You need some of these machines that they use in Germany...

Click to expand...

Yes we do.
Another thing I forgot to add is the railroads are very reluctant to merge into 1 or 2 systems that are govt. controlled, like Conrail did in the 70's. This makes track improvements much harder. Sperry or LORAM could use a few of these and contract them to railroads for track re-laying. We have a tool that can rip up and place new ties and rail but it gets expensive fast.

thanks for the replies, your replies i did not think of them. thats a few those machines that i watched on youtube.

switchmen37

I live near the joint line in Colorado. I see large piles of concrete ties that have been removed from service. I know that this observation is anecdotal, but I do know concrete spalls (freezing and thawing) in this climate.

Here in the Midwest area where we get hot summers and cold winters concrete tends to end up cracking and spliting unlike wood. Some areas went from wood to concrete, then back to wood because of this.
Its mostly good in areas where its warm / hot all year round like CA for example as I see tons of tracks with concrete ties on Google maps and when I was out there on the California Zephyr this year.

Cheers

All true, but most of Russia and northern Europe are in the same kind of climate as the U.S., so maybe they are doing something different with the concrete? It rains and snows and freezes and thaws there as well as here, so what are we missing in the U.S.?

I seem to recall a Danny Harmon video where he observed where ties went from wood to concrete and then back to wood. I recall it as being in his main area of knowledge (Florida.) High heat but also high humidity. Obviously, no freezing.

I think that you will find this interesting...

https://www.networkrailmediacentre....-railway-sleepers-laid-on-network-rail-tracks

Cheers,

graham

Individual experiences may vary.

I suspect that we will start to see greater use of innovative solutions such as composite ("plastic waste") sleepers/ties in the future as pointed to by Graham in his post above. However, large corporations such as privately owned railroads, will tend to do what is best for their "bottom line" until forced to change direction by shareholders, investors, customers, etc We are already seeing that happen in some areas of the corporate world.

Government owned and operated or regulated railroads are more likely to respond to "voter pressure" because that is what governs the politicians that control them, in democracies at least.

Cement manufacturing is a very energy intensive process that produces a lot of CO2 - e.g. 900kg for every 1000kg of Portand Cement produced. It relies on consuming a limited and non-renewable resource - calcium carbonate aka "Limestone".

Wooden sleepers/ties are less energy intensive and, including the fuel consumed in their harvesting and transport, produce less CO2. Their production relies on destroying forests which are great absorbers of CO2 and can take decades to produce. Properly managed (and not all forestry practices meet this criteria) timber sleepers/ties can be sustainable.

One thing that we seem to have far too much of is plastic waste. How energy efficient and carbon neutral the conversion of plastic waste into composite materials is yet to be reliably determined.

One thing that I have noted is that after a major rail incident (derailment), many (most???) of the timber sleepers/ties are still usable for their original purpose. Those that are not can be easily repurposed. Concrete sleepers/ties once damaged tend to be scrapped or recycled with more energy consumed.

My thoughts.

I do not understand the premise. Here in the US we have all types of track and ties and of course the machines to lay them. It is of course not homogenous across all lines, but many many main lines do use concrete ties. Many sidings and yards use wood and also steel ties. We also have had the composite ties made from recycled plastics for many years, enough to know they they can sometimes be a fire hazard in a derailment. I am thinking of one particular case years back where the crew could not escape the derailed locomotive because the composite "milk jug" ties caught fire creating a noxious smoke and intense flame destroying the locomotive and sadly killing a crew member and badly burning another.
I also do not understand the idea that track is laid or maintained by hand - it is most certainly not and is mostly work handled by machines unlike the 1800s :hehe:. Around this time of year near me the track gang is out doing maintenance (with machines!) a large machine with rotating shovels will come and scoop the ballast up from the track, wash it, and return it to the track bed. Foreign objects and dirt are collected into side dump cars that trail the machine. Other machines will identify broken or loose ties and replace them. Even others will level the track and tamp down the newly washed ballast. After all of this is done there is even a special train of flat cars that all of these machines can drive onto to be easily positioned at the next job.

it is also worth noting, that the ideas presented in the first post are probably not specifically Russian ideas/practices that need to be adopted elsewhere but are already likely used all around the world. the companies providing these services are worldwide, for example those I can think of off hand that do a good amount of work in the US are Plasser & Theurer (Austria) Pandrol (France) and Harsco.